| WST 212 |
Overseas Filipina Workers Sexualities, and the State Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1:10-2:30 p.m. |
Susan Van Dyne |
By way of close reading of cultural texts on overseas migration, e.g. fiction, non-fiction, visual and performance art and through an analysis of social documents, this course plots the narrative(s) of Philippine overseas labor migration from the 1960s onwards; it examines Filipina contract workers' experiences and representations of their migrant conditions. Particular emphasis will be placed on analyzing how the regulation of migration extends to the personal and the sexual, including sexuality and sexual practices. We will interrogate the official narrative of overseas workers as the bagong bayani - or the new hero - in relation to workers' narratives and underscore the intersections of migration, state interests and demands of the global economy. Prerequisite: WST 150 and one other Women's Studies course. Permission of the instructor required.
| WST 225 |
Women and the Law Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:50 a.m. |
Gwendolyn Mink |
This course will examine constitutional interpretations and statutory innovations affecting women's legal status and gender justice. Using case law as our starting point, we will consider the interaction between law and gender relations; the achievements and limitations of women's rights victories; and the impact of gender-conscious law and legal reform on women of different races, classes, and sexualities. Readings and lectures will focus on legal aspects of the following problems: women's constitutional citizenship; discrimination in the labor market; educational equity; poverty law and women's social rights; and sex/gender violence.
| WST 235 |
Youth Culture and Gender Tuesday, Thursday 9:00-10:20 a.m. |
Elisabeth Armstrong |
This course examines the corporate sales pitch to young consumers as well as low budget cultural productions to ask what constitutes "youth culture" in the U.S. We will discuss a wide range of mainstream and subcultural material for and by American youth, from movies and music to body politics, Riot Grrls and DIY (do it yourself) publications. We will explore their additions to (and transformations of) national, regional, and local conversations about gender and feminism in the U.S. today.
| WST 302 |
New Autobiography: Power of Women's Memoir Writing Tuesday 3:00-4:50 p.m. |
Myriam Chancy |
All too often, women are discouraged from listening to the voices within, the voices which critique, redefine, and affirm their lived experience and acquired knowledge. But it is only in listening to those voices that they can begin to change and transform the world which would want to silence or ignore those voices al together. It can easily be argued that personal narrative, as a form, has provided the raw material for much of feminist theory. Not surprisingly, memoir and autobiographical writing have enabled women to acquire a hard-won visibility. The memoir, both personal and political, has become the most accessible and potentially revolutionary genre of writing in print today. This curse proposes to examine the revolutionary aspects of the genre primarily (though not exclusively) through women's voices of varied backgrounds, and proposes to engage students in the political and healing journey of writing their own life stories. Themes addressed will include: childhood, violence, survival, memory, death, race, spirituality, generational difference, sexuality, class, and migration.
| WST 311 |
Mothers in Law and Policy Tuesday 1:00-2:50 p.m. |
Gwendolyn Mink |
This seminar will explore how law and policy distinguish among mothers based on class, race, culture and sexuality. Simultaneously considered will be various feminist policy-theoretical perspectives on and remedies for intersectional inequalities among mothers in family and child welfare law as well as in social policy. Throughout, we will examine when and why the law has or does set up antagonism between mothers and children as well as when and why mothers' rights and children's rights might be at odds. Specific topics may include child care and caregiving provision in social policy; trans-racial /cultural/national adoption; child custody and child removal; marriage/fatherhood promotion and maternal regulation in welfare and related social policies; fertility control and pregnancy regulation; among others.
| WST 312 |
Queer Resistance: Identities, Communities, and Social Movements Thursday 1:00-2:50 p.m. |
Nancy Whittier |
The course will examine constructions of lesbian, gay, queer, bisexual, and transgender at the levels of individual and collective identities, communities of various forms, and social protest, with a focus on the interplay between resistance and accommodation at each of these levels of analysis. Drawing on historical, theoretical, narrative, and ethnographic sources, we will examine multiple sites of queer resistance including local communities, academic institutions, media, the state, social movement organizations, and the Internet. We will pay explicit attention to queer identities, communities, and movements as racialized, shaped by class, gendered, and contextual. We will examine the consequences of various theories of gender, sexuality, and resistance for how we interpret the shapes that queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identity, community, and social movements take. Readings will include primary source documents from diverse groups, including published newsletters, organizational position papers, individual narratives, and material from organizational and personal Web sites and discussion groups, and students will conduct their own research using such primary sources.
| WST 320 |
Women of Color Feminist Movement in US Tuesday 3:00-4:50 p.m. |
Ann A. Ferguson |
This seminar will examine how feminists in the United States have addressed the interaction of sex/gender subordination with racial and ethnic inequality through their theoretical work, political movement, and expressive culture. Our focus will be on the work of women of color who have foregrounded the ways in which this intersection of social identities has profoundly shaped the meaning of sex/gender as well as what is considered feminist theory and practice in the U.S. today. We draw on a wide range of texts as the starting point for an exploration of how race/ethnicity makes a difference in the understanding of and action around issues that are thought of as "women's." One important goal will be to facilitate a dialogue over the course of the semester about questions of "difference" and power between and among women and the meaning this makes in our own lives.
| AAS 366 (5) |
Seminar: Contemporary Topics in Afro-American Studies Readings in Black and Queer Monday 7:30-9:30 p.m. |
Kevin Quashie |
See Department for description.
| AAS 366 (02) |
Ida B. Wells and the Struggle Against Racial Violence Thursday 3:00-4:50 p.m. |
Paula Giddings |
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a black investigative journalist who began, in 1892, the nation's first anti-lynching campaign. In her deconstruction of the reasons for, and response to, violence--and particularly lynching--she also uncovered the myriad components of racism in a formative period of race relations that depended on ideas of emerging social sciences, gender identity, and sexuality. The course will follow Wells's campaign, and in the process study the profound intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality which have shaped American culture and history.
| AAS 366 (04) |
Toni Morrison Tuesday 3:00 - 9:30 p.m. |
Tracy L. Vaughn |
This seminar will focus on the impact that Toni Morrison has had on American arts and letters through her roles as the editor, author and public scholar. As an editor, Morrison single-handedly ensured the publication of significant contemporary African American texts. Morrison the author, continues to create a canon that centers on and celebrates the complexities of African American life. As a public scholar Morrison scrutinizes the ways in which the American literary canon fails to acknowledge the cultural contributions of African Americans. Works will include all of Morrison's novels as well as Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination in addition to other short readings.
| AMS 120 |
Scribbling Women Monday, Wednesday 1:10-2:30 p.m. |
Sherry Marker |
With the help of the Sophia Smith Collection and the Smith College Archives, this writing intensive course looks at a number of 19th and 20th century American women writers. All wrestled with specific issues that confronted them as women; each wrote about important issues in American society.
| AMS 221 |
Women's History Through Documentary Wednesday 9:00-10:50 a.m. |
Joyce Follet |
The course surveys U.S. women's history from the colonial period to the present as depicted in documentaries. The class proceeds along two lines of inquiry, content and form. Through screenings of historical documentaries supplemented by lectures, readings, and discussion, the course moves chronologically through an examination of major themes in women's experience: family, community, work, sexuality, and politics. At the same time, the class develops a critical assessment of documentary as a form, with attention to its effectiveness in portraying the past as historical sources and technical methods change, its importance as means of transmitting history to the general public, and the funding and political constraints on its production, broadcast, and distribution.
| AMS 230 |
Asian Women Living in the Americas Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:50 p.m. |
Cathy Schlund-Vials |
See department for description.
| CLS 236 |
Cleopatra: Histories, Fiction, Fantasy Monday, Wednesday 1:10-2:30 p.m. |
Nancy Shumate |
A study of the transformation of Cleopatra, a competent Hellenistic ruler, into a historical myth, a staple of literature, and a cultural lens through which the political, aesthetic, and moral sensibilities of different eras have been focused. Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Orientalist, Postcolonial, Hollywood Cleopatras; reading from, among others, Plutarch, Virgil, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Dryden, Gautier, Shaw, historical novelists; some attention to Cleopatra in the visual arts.
| CLT 223 |
Women's Autobiography in Context Monday, Wednesday 9:00 - 10:20 a.m. |
Ann R. Jones |
An exploration of changes in the concept of the self and of literary techniques devised to empower that self as a public figure, whether outsider, social critic and innovator, or defender of a principle or tribe. Texts by Margery Kempe, Harriet Jacobs, Rigoberta Menchù, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sara Suleri.
| CLT 230 |
"Unnatural" Women: Mothers Who Kill Their Children Monday, Wednesday 7:30 - 9:30 p.m. |
Thalia Pandiri |
Some cultures give the murdering mother a central place in myth and literature while others treat the subject as taboo. How is such a woman depicted -- as monster, lunatic, victim, savior? What do the motives attributed to her reveal about a society's assumptions and values? What difference does it make if the author is a woman? Authors to be studied include Euripides, Seneca, Ovid, Anouilh, Papadiamandis, Atwood, Walker, Morrison. Prerequisite: at least one college-level course in literature.
| CLT 235 |
Fairy Tales and Gender Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:50 p.m. |
Elizabeth Harries |
A study of the literary fairy tale in Europe from the 1690s to the 1990s, with emphasis on the ways women have written, rewritten, and transformed them. Some attention to oral story-telling and to related stories in other cultures. Writers will include Aulnoy, Perrault, le Prince de Beaumont, the Grimms, Andersen, Christina Rossetti, Angela Carter, Sexton, Broumas. Prerequisite: at least one college-level course in literature.
| CLT 272 |
Women Writing: 20th Century Fiction Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1:10-2:30 p.m. |
Marilyn Schuster |
A study of the pleasures and politics of fiction by women from English-speaking and French-speaking cultures. How do women writers engage, subvert, and/or resist dominant meanings of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity and create new narrative spaces? Who speaks for whom? How does the reader participate in making meaning(s)? How do different theoretical perspectives (feminist, lesbian, queer, psychoanalytic, postcolonial, postmodern) change the way we read? Writers such as Woolf, Colette, Schwarz-Bart, Morrison, Duras, Rule, Kingston, and Winterson.
| CLT 293 |
Writings and Rewritings: Antigone Monday, Wednesday 2:40-4:00 p.m. |
Ann Jones |
A study of how literary texts written in a particular historical and cultural moment are revised and transformed in new geographies, ideological frameworks, and art forms. Oedipus' daughter Antigone, executed for buying her brother against the decree of the tyrant Creon, has been read as a sister defending family bonds against state power, as a woman supporting private good over brutal law, and as a feminist resisting male domination. Why has she been interpreted in such different ways in different times and places? We'll analyze her transformations from ancient Greece to the 21st century in drama and film from Sophocles to Anoulh, Brecht, the Congolese dramatist Sylvain Bemba, and Andrea Hairston; and in theorists from Hegel to Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Derrida, Gayle Rubin, Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler.
| ENG 376 |
Contemporary British Women Writers Tuesday 1:00-2:50 p.m. |
Robert Hosmer |
Consideration of a number of contemporary women writers, mostly British, some well-established, some not, who represent a variety of concerns and techniques. Emphasis on the pleasures of the text and significant ideas--political, spiritual, human, and esthetic. Efforts directed at appreciation of individuality and diversity as well as contributions to the development of fiction. Authors likely to include Anita Brookner, Angela Carter, Isabel Colegate, Eva Figes, Penelope Fitzgerald, Molly Keane, Penelope Lively, Edna O'Brien, Barbara Pym, Jean Rhys, Muriel Spark, and Jeanette Winterson; some supplementary critical reading.
| FRN 230 |
Women Writers of Africa and the Caribbean Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:50 a.m. |
Dawn Fulton |
An introduction to works by contemporary women writers from francophone Africa and the Caribbean. Topics to be studied include colonialism, exile, motherhood, and intersections between class and gender. Our study of these works and of the French language will be informed by attention to the historical, political, and cultural circumstances of writing as a woman in a former French colony. Texts will include works by Mariama Bâ, Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, and Myriam Warner-Vieyra.
| GOV 269 |
Politics of Gender and Sexuality Monday, Wednesday 1:10-2:30 p.m. |
Gary Lehring |
An examination of gender and sexuality as subjects of theoretical investigation, historically constructed in ways that have made possible various forms of regulation and scrutiny today. We will focus on the way in which traditional views of gender and sexuality still resonate with us in the modern world, helping to shape legislation and public opinion, creating substantial barriers to cultural and political change.
| HST 253 |
Women in Contemporary Europe Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:20 p.m. |
Darcy Buerkle |
A survey of European women's experiences during the twentieth century. Topics include the changing meanings of gender, work, women's relationship to the State, motherhood and marriage, shifting population patterns, and the expression and regulation of sexuality. Sources include novels, films, treatises, and memoirs.
| HST 280 Component |
Globalization, Transnational Politics and Im/migrant Cultures in U.S. History Tuesday 1:00-3:40 p.m. |
Jennifer Guglielmo |
This course will historicize the phenomenon of globalization by investigating the significance of im/migrant cultures and transnational cultural-political movements to the twentieth-century United States. How have these movements challenged narratives of global capitalism as a positive process of "investment," "progress" and "development"? What are the historical roots to such contemporary cross-border movements as labor radicalism, Black Liberation, feminism, and anti-colonialism? How have people historically responded to experiences of displacement and migration by redefining the meanings of home and citizenship? How do contemporary diasporic and "post-colonial" movements in music, art, and literature, emerge out of a long history of transnational activism?
| HST 383 |
American Women in the 19th and 20th Centuries Wednesday 1:10-3:00 p.m. |
Helen Horowitz |
See Department for description.
| IDP 208 |
Women's Medical Issues Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:50 a.m. |
Leslie Jaffe |
A study of topics and issues relating to women's health, including menstrual cycle, contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, abortion, menopause, depression, eating disorders, nutrition and cardiovascular disease. While the course focus will primarily be on the physiological aspects of these topics, some social, ethical and political implications will be considered including the issues of violence, the media's representation of women and gender bias in health care.
| MUS 100 |
Music and Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:50 a.m. |
Margaret Sarkissian |
This course explores the ways in which music functions in society to reflect or construct gender relations and the degrees to which a society's gender ideology and resulting behaviors affect its musical thought and practice. Using primarily non-western case studies as points of departure, particular emphasis will be placed upon the ways scholars write about gendered musical lives. No musical background is necessary for this course.
| POR 221 |
The Brazilian Body: Representing Women In Brazil's Literature and Culture Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1:10-2:30 p.m. |
Marguerite Harrison |
This course raises questions about gender, race, class and stereotype through narratives and images of women's bodies in 19th and 20th century Brazil. Works by writers such as Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector, Ana Miranda and Marilene Felinto, and artists Tarsila do Amaral, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Lygia Clark, and Rosana Paulino, among others, will be studied with the aim of addressing traditional cultural biases about beauty, sexuality, and Brazilian national identity.
| REL 110 |
Women Mystics' Theology Tuesday, Thursday 9:00-10:20 a.m. |
Elizabeth Carr |
This course studies the mystical writings of Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijch, Julian of Norwich, and Teresa of Avila, and their relevance to contemporary spirituality. Focus on their life journeys in terms of love, creativity, healing, and spiritual leadership. Occasional films and music.
| REL 335 |
Problems in Jewish Religion and Culture
Topic: Tying and Untying the Knot: Women, Marriage and Divorce in Judaism Thursday 7:30-9:30 p.m. |
Lois Dubin |
An exploration of marriage and divorce as important moments in Jewish women's lives and as structured by religion, law, and society. How were religious norms put into practice by Jewish societies in different historical periods? How were Jewish women's private lives affected by public regulation, and how did Jewish women negotiate the forces of community, family, religion, and the state? Examination of legal and religious texts, case-studies, and fiction drawn from antiquity to the present.
| SOC 222 |
Blackness in the Americas Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:50 p.m. |
Ginetta Candelario |
This course will examine the African Diaspora to the Americas beginning in 1501 with the arrival of the first Hispanicized African slaves (ladinos) to Hispaniola, and the diverse race ideologies and racial institutions that developed around African slavery and emancipation. In this way, this course will comparatively examine the African experience in both South and North American contexts, historically and contemporarily. This course will provide an overview of the various African-based slave systems in Latin America comparing these with the subsequent emergence of a political economy of slavery in the United States. A relative consideration of the impact of these various hemispheric slave economics on domestic and hemispheric race ideologies will be undertaken. Gender will be a key line of analysis, both in terms of texts selected, lectures and assignments.
| SOC 228 |
Women, Gender and Globalization Tuesday, Thursday 9:00-10:20 a.m. |
Leslie King |
Globalization implies many things, including corporatization, privatization, and "Americanization." In this course, we will explore how globalization affects the social construction of gender and how, in turn, local gender regimes shape globalization. Globalization is a process that is at once economic, political, and cultural; this course will explore globalization from these varying angles, always with women and gender at the center of analysis.
| SOC 229 |
Sex and Gender in American Society Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:00-10:50 a.m. |
Alice P. Julier |
An examination of the ways in which the social system creates, maintains, and reproduces gender dichotomies with specific attention to the significance of gender in interaction, culture, and a number of institutional contexts, including work, politics, families and sexuality.
| SOC 310 |
The Sociology of Courageous Behavior: Gender, Community and the Individual Tuesday 3:00-4:50 p.m. |
Myron P. Glazer |
The application of theory and research in contemporary sociology, with particular emphasis on the study of loss, adversity, and courageous response. Case studies include the analysis of ordinary people and extraordinary evil, women's involvement in the struggle to locate the disappeared in Argentina and elsewhere, dissidents to the oppressive Communist society in Czechoslovakia, resistance in concentration camps and ghettos and rescuers of Jews during the European Holocaust. Women's memoirs will serve as a major source.
| SOC 323 |
Gender and Social Change Wednesday 1:10-3:00 p.m. |
Nancy Whittier |
Theory and research on the construction of and change in gender categories in the United States, with particular attention to social movements that seek to change gender definitions and stratification, including both feminist and anti-feminist movements. Theoretical frameworks are drawn from feminist theory and social movement theory. Readings examine historical shifts in gender relations and norms, changing definitions of gender in contemporary everyday life, and politicized struggles over gender definitions. Themes throughout the course include the social construction of both femininity and masculinity, the intersection of race, class, and sexual orientation with gender, and the growth of a politics of identity. Case studies include feminist, lesbian and gay, right-wing, self help, anti-abortion, and pro-choice movements.
